The internet has exploded with new service offerings. Websites yahoo.com, google.com, ebay.com, amazon.com, and iTunes.com have demonstrated well the ability to provide valuable services to a large dispersed geographic audience through the internet (ebay, yahoo, google, amazon and iTunes (Apple) are trademarks of the respective companies). Thousands of different types of web services are available for many kinds of functionality. Advantages of having a service as the intermediary point between clients, users, and systems, and their associated services, includes centralized processing, centralized maintaining of data, for example to have an all knowing database for scope of services provided, having a supervisory point of control, providing an administrator with access to data maintained by users of the web service, and other advantages associated with centralized control. The advantages are analogous to those provided by the traditional mainframe computer to its clients wherein the mainframe owns all resources, data, processing, and centralized control for all users and systems (clients) that access its services. However, as computers declined in price and adequate processing power was brought to more distributed systems, such as Open Systems (i.e. Windows, UNIX, Linux, and Mac environments), the mainframe was no longer necessary for many of the daily computing tasks. In fact, adequate processing power is incorporated in highly mobile devices, various handheld mobile data processing systems, and other mobile data processing systems. Technology continues to drive improved processing power and data storage capabilities in less physical space of a device. Just as Open Systems took much of the load of computing off of mainframe computers, so to can mobile data processing systems offload tasks usually performed by connected web services. As mobile data processing systems are more capable, there is no need for a service to middleman interactions possible between them.
While a centralized service has its advantages, there are also disadvantages. A service becomes a clearinghouse for all web service transactions. Regardless of the number of threads of processing spread out over hardware and processor platforms, the web service itself can become a bottleneck causing poor performance for timely response, and can cause a large amount of data that must be kept for all connected users and/or systems. Even large web services mentioned above suffer from performance and maintenance overhead. A web service response will likely never be fast enough. Additionally, archives must be kept to ensure recovery in the event of a disaster because the service houses all data for its operations. Archives also require storage, processing power, planning, and maintenance. A significantly large and costly data center is necessary to accommodate millions of users and/or systems to connect to the service. There is a tremendous amount of overhead in providing such a service. Data center processing power, data capacity, data transmission bandwidth and speed, infrastructure entities, and various performance considerations are quite costly. Costs include real estate required, utility bills for electricity and cooling, system maintenance, personnel to operate a successful business with service(s), etc. A method is needed to prevent large data center costs while eliminating performance issues for features sought. It is inevitable that as users are hungry for more features and functionality on their mobile data processing systems, processing will be moved closer to the device for optimal performance and infrastructure cost savings.
Service delivered location dependent content was disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,456,234; 6,731,238; 7,187,997 (Johnson). Anonymous location based services was disclosed in U.S. PTO Publication 2006/0022048 (Johnson). The Johnson patents and published application operate as most web services do in that the clients connecting to the service benefit from the service by having some connectivity to the service. U.S. Publication 2006/0022048 (Johnson) could cause large numbers of users to inundate the service with device heartbeats and data to maintain, depending on the configurations made. While this may be of little concern to a company that has successfully deployed substantially large web service resources, it may be of great concern to other more frugal companies. A method is needed for enabling location dependent features and functionality without the burden of requiring a service.
Users are skeptical about their privacy as internet services proliferate. A service by its very nature typically holds information for a user maintained in a centralized service database. The user's preferences, credential information, permissions, customizations, billing information, surfing habits, and other conceivable user configurations and activity monitoring, can be housed by the service at the service. Company insiders, as well as outside attackers, may get access. Most people are concerned with preventing personal information of any type being kept in a centralized database which may potentially become compromised from a security standpoint. Location based services are of even more concern, in particular when the locations of the user are to be known to a centralized service. A method and system is needed for making users comfortable with knowing that their personal information is at less risk of being compromised.
A reasonable requirement is to push intelligence out to the mobile data processing systems themselves, for example, in knowing their own locations and perhaps the locations of other nearby mobile data processing systems. Mobile data processing systems can intelligently handle many of their own application requirements without depending on some remote service. Just as two people in a business organization should not need a manager to speak to each other, no two mobile data processing systems should require a service middleman for useful location dependent features and functionality. The knowing of its own location should not be the end of social interaction implementation local to the mobile data processing systems, but rather the starting place for a large number of useful distributed local applications that do not require a service.
Different users use different types of Mobile data processing Systems (MSs) which are also called mobile devices: laptops, tablet computers, Personal Computers (PCs), Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), cell phones, automobile dashboard mounted data processing systems, shopping cart mounted data processing systems, mobile vehicle or apparatus mounted data processing systems, Personal Navigational Devices (PNDs), iPhones (iPhone is a trademark of Apple, Inc.), various handheld mobile data processing systems, etc. MSs move freely in the environment, and are unpredictably moveable (i.e. can be moved anywhere, anytime). Many of these Mobile data processing Systems (MSs) do not have capability of being automatically located, or are not using a service for being automatically located. Conventional methods use directly relative stationary references such as satellites, antennas, etc. to locate MSs. Stationary references are expensive to deploy, and risk obsolescence as new technologies are introduced to the marketplace. Stationary references have finite scope of support for locating MSs.
While the United States E911 mandate for cellular devices documents requirements for automatic location of a Mobile data processing System (MS) such as a cell phone, the mandate does not necessarily promote real time location and tracking of the MSs, nor does it define architecture for exploiting Location Based Services (LBS). We are in an era where Location Based Services (LBS), and location dependent features and functionality, are among the most promising technologies in the world. Automatic locating of every Mobile data processing System (MS) is an evolutionary trend. A method is needed to shorten the length of time for automatically locating every MS. Such a goal can be costly using prior art technologies such as GPS (Global Positioning System), radio wave triangulation, coming within range to a known located sensor, or the like. Complex system infrastructure, or added hardware costs to the MSs themselves, make such ventures costly and time constrained by schedules and costs involved in engineering, construction, and deployment.
A method is needed for enabling users to get location dependent features and functionality through having their mobile locations known, regardless of whether or not their MS is equipped for being located. Also, new and modern location dependent features and functionality can be provided to a MS unencumbered by a connected service.